The invention relates to a magentic suspension railway, with electromagnetic carrying, guiding and driving gear. In such a railway, the forces of supporting and guiding magnets carry, guide, drive and brake the railway vehicle. The magnets regulate gap distances from track-side reaction rails to support structures of the vehicle, these distances being measured by gap sensors. The magnets are mounted in the support structures through spring systems in such a way that both the supporting and guiding magnets, as well as supporting magnets at lateral sides of the vehicle, are decoupled from each other. The support structures are also coupled to the vehicle superstructure or body through spring systems.
A magnetic suspension railway of this kind is described in Thyssen Technische Berichte (Technical Reports) January, 1979, and in West German Offenlegunschrift 26 26 439. The known suspension arrangement which is connected to the support structure requires a high stiffness and precision and a magnet spring system having a relatively high minimum stiffness to ensure static stability relative to a pitch axis of the magnets and a sufficiently exact parallel guidance of the magnets relative to the support structure or vehicle. The relatively high natural frequencies of the magnet suspension resulting from the high stiffness lead, especially upon disturbances occurring in electrical service, to great gap deviations or high dynamic requirements for the magnets, respectively. In case of de-excitation of the magnets, upon setting down or upon failure of several successively arranged magnets or of all magnets of a hover or support structure, it is a known practice to dispose gliding and set-down skids on the vehicle or support structures, upon which the load can be set down on the track surface. In this connection, spring-supported glide skids are used, so as to attenuate the shock loads on the rail and on the vehicle when the vehicle falls. This insures a stable gliding phase for the vehicle on the rail. In addition the high-frequency disturbances of the gliding phase are not completely transmitted to the hover structure or the vehicle. Fall gaps of 10 to 20 mm in this connection, must be expected and upon lifting of the vehicle, magnet gaps of 30 to 44 mm may occur because of the spring motion of a single-magnet spring system upon de-excitation of the magnets. This means that the lifting and the regulated set-down process will undesirably require substantial increases in the size of the magnets, and the carrying and guiding power to be used, as well as respective separate protection for the magnetic flux supplies.
Moreover, as the vehicle falls, there occurs in the vehicle and in the track, at discrete points, according to the number of glide skids per vehicle, dynamic shock loads which are approximately two to three times as great as the evenly distributed carrying and guiding forces in normal operation. The respective design sizes of track and vehicle, above all, in a vertical direction and in a travel direction to accommodate these loads, have an expecially strong cost-increasing effect on the total system.
The following known measures have been taken to improve the falling behavior occurring upon failure of individual magnets: over-dimensioning of the individual magnets, active control of the initial tension of the magnet spring system, and higher stiffness of the magnet suspension and the hover structure frames. If over-dimensioning of the magnets is to be dispensed with in favor of active control, it is necessary, due to the plurality of magnets needed, to require relatively complex regulating, control and switching means in both planes of the spring support. If this drawback is to be avoided in the system according to the prior art, the high stiffness of the magnet suspension and large nominal gaps of the magnets will have to be accepted. This means a further worsening of the weight balance and the service behavior of the system and higher investment costs for the track as well. Also, the car box spring suspensions must be given correspondingly larger dimensions.